Ultimo Guerrero and Atlantis don’t seem to like each other! I think Mephisto/Mascara might be the least interesting of all the possible singles matches to come out of that semimain. Ephesto/Mephisto would at least be weird.

El Rey finally released details about next week’s tapings for the AAA show. It’s name has switched again, to “Lucha Underground”. Contrary to what I had reported earlier, there will be AAA wrestlers on the show: Blue Demon Jr., Sexy Star, Fenix, Drago and Pentagon Jr. Note they’re all masked luchadors – that’s probably one big reason why Sexy Star is there and others are not. Other people are to be announced at some point later, though probably not too much later since the tapings are still supposed to be on 09/06 and the show will debut on 10/08 at 8pm ET/7pm CT.

The press release claims these names were all announced at TripleMania. That didn’t actually happen, but maybe they forgot about in the Alberto del Rio rush. (It may not be just that, because AAA Mexico has been really quiet about the AAA US project of late.) This probably explain why Drago was added to the card, since that gave them footage of all five people to use later. (TripleMania as B-roll, basically.) The plan looks like they’re building around Blue Demon Jr. as the big star, and hopefully he’ll be more reliable available in the US than he has been for Mexico.

Eric Van Wagenen is listed as the showrunner. IMDB lists him as working on past Mark Burnett shows (including the Contender, weirdly named dropped here) and also on WWE’s most recent reality shows: the last season of Tough Enough and the (only?) season of Legends House. I did not watch Legends House, but Tough Enough was pretty standard reality show fare completely made by Steve Austin’s performance.

I probably would have more faith in this project if the person writing the quotes could spell “luchadores” correctly. Edit: The online dictionaries are saying “-es” is the correct plural, not “-s”, so they’re right and I’m crushed.

Random tournament! Champions are still Nero Casas & Shocker and any of the four tecnico teams could win this. Only 2 trios matches means the tournament matches could get more time, though Puebla shows seem to be on the short side normally.

Edit: I missed it, but this is just Block A of a tournament. So now anyone could really win.

I think they namedrop “The Contender” because it aired with a Spanish dub on Telemundo and was fantastically popular amongst Hispanic viewers. Of course, that was the first season, and I’m sure if I went and looked it up on IMDb, I’d find that Van Wagenen’s credits are far removed from the season. (I can say this because I just DID look it up – he was seasons 4 and 5 – wait, there was a season 5?)

@CRZ: “The Contender” struck out as weird to me because my only remembrance of it was how it failed on NBC and got canceled after one season; I didn’t remember it was around on other networks for a few more years after that. It doesn’t seem like a banner of success unless you’re either modeling this show after that, or you just have a strong affinity to that show. I guessed the latter.

But these things are really PR people speaking to other PR people. No one’s going to watch or not watch based on them, they’re just to provide ready made copy for trade magazines.

All those reality shows did interpersonal drama leading up to one bout or one match or one activity. Those were all reality shows (of varying levels of reality), but maybe Lucha WMC Masters isn’t out of the question.